File Storage
- Introduction
- Configuration
- Obtaining Disk Instances
- Retrieving Files
- Storing Files
- Deleting Files
- Directories
- Custom Filesystems
Introduction
Laravel provides a powerful filesystem abstraction thanks to the wonderful Flysystem PHP package by Frank de Jonge. The Laravel Flysystem integration provides simple to use drivers for working with local filesystems, Amazon S3, and Rackspace Cloud Storage. Even better, it's amazingly simple to switch between these storage options as the API remains the same for each system.
Configuration
The filesystem configuration file is located at config/filesystems.php
. Within this file you may configure all of your "disks". Each disk represents a particular storage driver and storage location. Example configurations for each supported driver are included in the configuration file. So, modify the configuration to reflect your storage preferences and credentials.
Of course, you may configure as many disks as you like, and may even have multiple disks that use the same driver.
The Public Disk
The public
disk is intended for files that are going to be publicly accessible. By default, the public
disk uses the local
driver and stores these files in storage/app/public
. To make them accessible from the web, you should create a symbolic link from public/storage
to storage/app/public
. This convention will keep your publicly accessible files in one directory that can be easily shared across deployments when using zero down-time deployment systems like Envoyer.
To create the symbolic link, you may use the storage:link
Artisan command:
php artisan storage:link
Of course, once a file has been stored and the symbolic link has been created, you can create a URL to the files using the asset
helper:
echo asset('storage/file.txt');
The Local Driver
When using the local
driver, all file operations are relative to the root
directory defined in your configuration file. By default, this value is set to the storage/app
directory. Therefore, the following method would store a file in storage/app/file.txt
:
Storage::disk('local')->put('file.txt', 'Contents');
Driver Prerequisites
Composer Packages
Before using the SFTP, S3, or Rackspace drivers, you will need to install the appropriate package via Composer:
- SFTP:
league/flysystem-sftp ~1.0
- Amazon S3:
league/flysystem-aws-s3-v3 ~1.0
- Rackspace:
league/flysystem-rackspace ~1.0
An absolute must for performance is to use a cached adapter. You will need an additional package for this:
- CachedAdapter:
league/flysystem-cached-adapter ~1.0
S3 Driver Configuration
The S3 driver configuration information is located in your config/filesystems.php
configuration file. This file contains an example configuration array for an S3 driver. You are free to modify this array with your own S3 configuration and credentials. For convenience, these environment variables match the naming convention used by the AWS CLI.
FTP Driver Configuration
Laravel's Flysystem integrations works great with FTP; however, a sample configuration is not included with the framework's default filesystems.php
configuration file. If you need to configure a FTP filesystem, you may use the example configuration below:
'ftp' => [ 'driver' => 'ftp', 'host' => 'ftp.example.com', 'username' => 'your-username', 'password' => 'your-password', // Optional FTP Settings... // 'port' => 21, // 'root' => '', // 'passive' => true, // 'ssl' => true, // 'timeout' => 30,],
SFTP Driver Configuration
Laravel's Flysystem integrations works great with SFTP; however, a sample configuration is not included with the framework's default filesystems.php
configuration file. If you need to configure a SFTP filesystem, you may use the example configuration below:
'sftp' => [ 'driver' => 'sftp', 'host' => 'example.com', 'username' => 'your-username', 'password' => 'your-password', // Settings for SSH key based authentication... // 'privateKey' => '/path/to/privateKey', // 'password' => 'encryption-password', // Optional SFTP Settings... // 'port' => 22, // 'root' => '', // 'timeout' => 30,],
Rackspace Driver Configuration
Laravel's Flysystem integrations works great with Rackspace; however, a sample configuration is not included with the framework's default filesystems.php
configuration file. If you need to configure a Rackspace filesystem, you may use the example configuration below:
'rackspace' => [ 'driver' => 'rackspace', 'username' => 'your-username', 'key' => 'your-key', 'container' => 'your-container', 'endpoint' => 'https://identity.api.rackspacecloud.com/v2.0/', 'region' => 'IAD', 'url_type' => 'publicURL',],
Caching
To enable caching for a given disk, you may add a cache
directive to the disk's configuration options. The cache
option should be an array of caching options containing the disk
name, the expire
time in seconds, and the cache prefix
:
's3' => [ 'driver' => 's3', // Other Disk Options... 'cache' => [ 'store' => 'memcached', 'expire' => 600, 'prefix' => 'cache-prefix', ],],
Obtaining Disk Instances
The Storage
facade may be used to interact with any of your configured disks. For example, you may use the put
method on the facade to store an avatar on the default disk. If you call methods on the Storage
facade without first calling the disk
method, the method call will automatically be passed to the default disk:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage; Storage::put('avatars/1', $fileContents);
If your applications interacts with multiple disks, you may use the disk
method on the Storage
facade to work with files on a particular disk:
Storage::disk('s3')->put('avatars/1', $fileContents);
Retrieving Files
The get
method may be used to retrieve the contents of a file. The raw string contents of the file will be returned by the method. Remember, all file paths should be specified relative to the "root" location configured for the disk:
$contents = Storage::get('file.jpg');
The exists
method may be used to determine if a file exists on the disk:
$exists = Storage::disk('s3')->exists('file.jpg');
Downloading Files
The download
method may be used to generate a response that forces the user's browser to download the file at the given path. The download
method accepts a file name as the second argument to the method, which will determine the file name that is seen by the user downloading the file. Finally, you may pass an array of HTTP headers as the third argument to the method:
return Storage::download('file.jpg'); return Storage::download('file.jpg', $name, $headers);
File URLs
You may use the url
method to get the URL for the given file. If you are using the local
driver, this will typically just prepend /storage
to the given path and return a relative URL to the file. If you are using the s3
or rackspace
driver, the fully qualified remote URL will be returned:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage; $url = Storage::url('file.jpg');
Remember, if you are using the local
driver, all files that should be publicly accessible should be placed in the storage/app/public
directory. Furthermore, you should create a symbolic link at public/storage
which points to the storage/app/public
directory.
Temporary URLs
For files stored using the s3
or rackspace
driver, you may create a temporary URL to a given file using the temporaryUrl
method. This methods accepts a path and a DateTime
instance specifying when the URL should expire:
$url = Storage::temporaryUrl( 'file.jpg', now()->addMinutes(5));
Local URL Host Customization
If you would like to pre-define the host for files stored on a disk using the local
driver, you may add a url
option to the disk's configuration array:
'public' => [ 'driver' => 'local', 'root' => storage_path('app/public'), 'url' => env('APP_URL').'/storage', 'visibility' => 'public',],
File Metadata
In addition to reading and writing files, Laravel can also provide information about the files themselves. For example, the size
method may be used to get the size of the file in bytes:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage; $size = Storage::size('file.jpg');
The lastModified
method returns the UNIX timestamp of the last time the file was modified:
$time = Storage::lastModified('file.jpg');
Storing Files
The put
method may be used to store raw file contents on a disk. You may also pass a PHP resource
to the put
method, which will use Flysystem's underlying stream support. Using streams is greatly recommended when dealing with large files:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage; Storage::put('file.jpg', $contents); Storage::put('file.jpg', $resource);
Automatic Streaming
If you would like Laravel to automatically manage streaming a given file to your storage location, you may use the putFile
or putFileAs
method. This method accepts either a Illuminate\Http\File
or Illuminate\Http\UploadedFile
instance and will automatically stream the file to your desired location:
use Illuminate\Http\File;use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage; // Automatically generate a unique ID for file name...Storage::putFile('photos', new File('/path/to/photo')); // Manually specify a file name...Storage::putFileAs('photos', new File('/path/to/photo'), 'photo.jpg');
There are a few important things to note about the putFile
method. Note that we only specified a directory name, not a file name. By default, the putFile
method will generate a unique ID to serve as the file name. The file's extension will be determined by examining the file's MIME type. The path to the file will be returned by the putFile
method so you can store the path, including the generated file name, in your database.
The putFile
and putFileAs
methods also accept an argument to specify the "visibility" of the stored file. This is particularly useful if you are storing the file on a cloud disk such as S3 and would like the file to be publicly accessible:
Storage::putFile('photos', new File('/path/to/photo'), 'public');
Prepending & Appending To Files
The prepend
and append
methods allow you to write to the beginning or end of a file:
Storage::prepend('file.log', 'Prepended Text'); Storage::append('file.log', 'Appended Text');
Copying & Moving Files
The copy
method may be used to copy an existing file to a new location on the disk, while the move
method may be used to rename or move an existing file to a new location:
Storage::copy('old/file.jpg', 'new/file.jpg'); Storage::move('old/file.jpg', 'new/file.jpg');
File Uploads
In web applications, one of the most common use-cases for storing files is storing user uploaded files such as profile pictures, photos, and documents. Laravel makes it very easy to store uploaded files using the store
method on an uploaded file instance. Call the store
method with the path at which you wish to store the uploaded file:
<?php namespace App\Http\Controllers; use Illuminate\Http\Request;use App\Http\Controllers\Controller; class UserAvatarController extends Controller{ /** * Update the avatar for the user. * * @param Request $request * @return Response */ public function update(Request $request) { $path = $request->file('avatar')->store('avatars'); return $path; }}
There are a few important things to note about this example. Note that we only specified a directory name, not a file name. By default, the store
method will generate a unique ID to serve as the file name. The file's extension will be determined by examining the file's MIME type. The path to the file will be returned by the store
method so you can store the path, including the generated file name, in your database.
You may also call the putFile
method on the Storage
facade to perform the same file manipulation as the example above:
$path = Storage::putFile('avatars', $request->file('avatar'));
Specifying A File Name
If you would not like a file name to be automatically assigned to your stored file, you may use the storeAs
method, which receives the path, the file name, and the (optional) disk as its arguments:
$path = $request->file('avatar')->storeAs( 'avatars', $request->user()->id);
Of course, you may also use the putFileAs
method on the Storage
facade, which will perform the same file manipulation as the example above:
$path = Storage::putFileAs( 'avatars', $request->file('avatar'), $request->user()->id);
Specifying A Disk
By default, this method will use your default disk. If you would like to specify another disk, pass the disk name as the second argument to the store
method:
$path = $request->file('avatar')->store( 'avatars/'.$request->user()->id, 's3');
File Visibility
In Laravel's Flysystem integration, "visibility" is an abstraction of file permissions across multiple platforms. Files may either be declared public
or private
. When a file is declared public
, you are indicating that the file should generally be accessible to others. For example, when using the S3 driver, you may retrieve URLs for public
files.
You can set the visibility when setting the file via the put
method:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage; Storage::put('file.jpg', $contents, 'public');
If the file has already been stored, its visibility can be retrieved and set via the getVisibility
and setVisibility
methods:
$visibility = Storage::getVisibility('file.jpg'); Storage::setVisibility('file.jpg', 'public')
Deleting Files
The delete
method accepts a single filename or an array of files to remove from the disk:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage; Storage::delete('file.jpg'); Storage::delete(['file.jpg', 'file2.jpg']);
If necessary, you may specify the disk that the file should be deleted from:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage; Storage::disk('s3')->delete('folder_path/file_name.jpg');
Directories
Get All Files Within A Directory
The files
method returns an array of all of the files in a given directory. If you would like to retrieve a list of all files within a given directory including all sub-directories, you may use the allFiles
method:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage; $files = Storage::files($directory); $files = Storage::allFiles($directory);
Get All Directories Within A Directory
The directories
method returns an array of all the directories within a given directory. Additionally, you may use the allDirectories
method to get a list of all directories within a given directory and all of its sub-directories:
$directories = Storage::directories($directory); // Recursive...$directories = Storage::allDirectories($directory);
Create A Directory
The makeDirectory
method will create the given directory, including any needed sub-directories:
Storage::makeDirectory($directory);
Delete A Directory
Finally, the deleteDirectory
may be used to remove a directory and all of its files:
Storage::deleteDirectory($directory);
Custom Filesystems
Laravel's Flysystem integration provides drivers for several "drivers" out of the box; however, Flysystem is not limited to these and has adapters for many other storage systems. You can create a custom driver if you want to use one of these additional adapters in your Laravel application.
In order to set up the custom filesystem you will need a Flysystem adapter. Let's add a community maintained Dropbox adapter to our project:
composer require spatie/flysystem-dropbox
Next, you should create a service provider such as DropboxServiceProvider
. In the provider's boot
method, you may use the Storage
facade's extend
method to define the custom driver:
<?php namespace App\Providers; use Storage;use League\Flysystem\Filesystem;use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;use Spatie\Dropbox\Client as DropboxClient;use Spatie\FlysystemDropbox\DropboxAdapter; class DropboxServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider{ /** * Perform post-registration booting of services. * * @return void */ public function boot() { Storage::extend('dropbox', function ($app, $config) { $client = new DropboxClient( $config['authorization_token'] ); return new Filesystem(new DropboxAdapter($client)); }); } /** * Register bindings in the container. * * @return void */ public function register() { // }}
The first argument of the extend
method is the name of the driver and the second is a Closure that receives the $app
and $config
variables. The resolver Closure must return an instance of League\Flysystem\Filesystem
. The $config
variable contains the values defined in config/filesystems.php
for the specified disk.
Once you have created the service provider to register the extension, you may use the dropbox
driver in your config/filesystems.php
configuration file.